Notes: Not to be confused with the 1991 series, Superman: The Man of Steel

Man of Steel is a weird one. Hailed falsely by many as the definitive, post-Crisis Superman origin, it gets much more respect than it truly, currently deserves. On the strength of the story itself, not to mention the sheer audacity of fundamentally re-writing Superman's origin, it certainly deserves attention. However, it was quietly thrown out of current DCU continuity in early 2001. Across the whole series of Superman titles, the Jeph Loeb-led effort described how Superman discovered that most of Man of Steel's revelations were, in fact, not true.

The three really important things that remained of Man of Steel after Loeb's revamp were:

• the similarity between the current Superman and Superman (I): neither had a career as Superboy

• the younger and more active elder Kents, both of whom are still alive, and more like their Lois & Clark counterparts

• the re-interpretation of the Luthor character as having a sensible reason for his hatred of Superman, and as being more of a corporate shark than a mad scientist

Loeb's "counter-re-imagining" was, itself, later supplemented by Waid's Birthright, which strongly affirms Byrne's changes that Loeb upheld, but continues to repudiate Byrne's concept of the earliest part of Kal-El's life.

Put most simply, Man of Steel's re-imagining of Krypton has not survived into the 21st century, but his depiction of Kansas life--which, ironically, may have been the thing most faithful to decades-old knowledge of Earth 2's Kal-L--has proven fertile ground for the imagination of subsequent writers.

This is not to imply that any part of Steel can be simply "ignored". Loeb's March 2001 storytelling technique was very clever. While he could have simply told his story and said to fans, "this is the new origin, deal with it", he didn't. Instead Superman begins the tale as the Byrne Superman, and then discovers that what he thought about himself was wrong. Thus, to fully understand the 2001 revamp, you actually need Man of Steel.

Alex Jay designed the logos. There are two different logos for the first issue.